> More details are on the wiki page:
>http://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007
Hello X developers,
I would like to get involved with X.org and its future in the area
of "multimedia". Maybe the X developers' summit would be a good occasion to
meet and discuss ideas, if you have a slot to spare I would be happy to give
a short talk on what I have done and what could be done in the future.
My interest is in extending the X Window System to provide support for
network-transparent multimedia. To demonstrate that this is conceptually
viable I have written three X extensions, providing: timing support, audio
support, compressed media support. The extensions are minimalistic but
sufficient to enable many multimedia applications, including for expamle
- network-transparent, robustly synchronized video/audio playback
- network-transparent video editing (cutting, effects) with real-time preview
Conceptually I would like the X server to provide
- timing support: Schedule X drawing (or other) operations to a later point in
time (XSync in its present form is unfortunately insufficient)
- audio support: well, the title says it all. It includes playback, recording
and simple processing (arthimetics, FIR filters, resampling). This is
probably highly controversial, but basically I think that integrating audio
at the X protocol level has significant advantages over a separate audio
server (like MAS etc), especially when it comes to synchronization
- compressed media support: quite obvious as well, I would like to transfer
compressed images and audio within the X protocol. Unlike XIE (X imaging
extension) this should include support for nonintra-coded pictures
I have a proof-of-concept implementation that demonstrates all of the above
can be done (will be relased by beginning/mid-August, still some code cleanup
to do, including working demo applications), but lots of implementation
issues remain with the core X server.
I would very much like to discuss if this form of multimedia support is a
worthwhile thing to provide in the X server (or, rather, convince that it
is :), and how I could proceed in integrating this support in X.org, so let
me know what you think.
Best regards,
Helge Bahmann
--
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists stand
on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming